Politics

Indy Undercover

I mentioned Indy Undercover on IndyScribe, but I’ve now read several of the posts, and want to comment here on it separately.
Indy Undercover a site about law enforcement issues in Indianapolis, purportedly written by an law enforcement officer. It’s getting lots of traffic and comments from other people who claim to be law enforcement officers in the city, and the tone of the site is hyper right-wing and very, very anti Democrat.
There are a couple of blog comments that reference this past year’s Human Rights Ordinance — specifically that officers felt the ordinance trumped their concerns about the consoliation of the IPD and the Sheriff’s Department. But the comments are virulently homophobic, which is really alarming. These are the people who are supposed to serve and protect us? Yikes, yikes, and double f*&king yikes.
UPDATE: After the 2006 November election, it was revealed that the Indy Undercover website was not run by anyone from the Indianapolis Police Department, but rather by Indianapolis radio personality Abdul Hakim-Shabazz.

Continue ReadingIndy Undercover

Bad Identity Data Follows You Around

Boing Boing details an example of the kind of personal data mining problems I discussed in my review of No Place to Hide: Behind the Scenes of Our Emerging Surveillance Society. One of their readers explains his problem:

What, precisely, did it turn up? Ah, the woman could not tell me that, because she herself did not know. She merely entered my name, birthdate, and SS# into her computer terminal, and a service provided by First Advantage SafeRent Inc. told her “no.” So, the apartment complex kept my $75 application fee, showed me the door, and left me to deal with the nice people at SafeRent on my own. This entailed downloading a PDF form from their web site, printing it, signing it, and mailing it to them with a copy of my driver’s license, to prove my own identity. Presumably this is purely for financial reasons, since SafeRent must prefer to sell its information, and will only give it away if I can convince them that I am the “person of interest.”

Since I didn’t feel like waiting for a response that may take several weeks, I decided to satisfy my curiosity with one of the many online services that now offer background checks. I paid a total of $78 for a nationwide search on myself. And, what do you know, there I am, listed as being guilty of a misdemeanor.
Only one problem: I was indeed charged, many years ago, but the charge was dismissed with prejudice, and I have a copy of the court document to prove it.

…

I will still have to go after more than 100 online background-checking services, one by one, because, inevitably, they are creating their own databases derived from second-hand or third-hand sources. (A local database is so much cheaper for them to search, obviously.) One of the services I looked at states that it will not correct any error until compelled to do so by a court order. And of course new services are popping up all the time.

Continue ReadingBad Identity Data Follows You Around

Polar bears drown amid Arctic thaw

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent, Reuters, Via Scotman.com News:

OSLO (Reuters) – Polar bears are drowning and receding Arctic glaciers have uncovered previously unknown islands in a drastic 2006 summer thaw widely blamed on global warming.
Signs of wrenching changes are apparent around the Arctic region due to unusual warmth — the summer minimum for ice is usually reached between mid-September and early October before the Arctic freeze extends its grip.
“We know about three new islands this year that have been uncovered because the glaciers have retreated,” said Rune Bergstrom, environmental adviser to the governor of Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago about 1,000 km (600 miles) from the North Pole.
The largest is about 300 by 100 metres, he told Reuters.
On a trip this summer “We saw a couple of polar bears in the sea east of Svalbard — one of them looked to be dead and the other one looked to be exhausted,” said Julian Dowdeswell, head of the Scott Polar Research Institute in England.
He said that the bears had apparently been stranded at sea by melting ice. The bears generally live around the fringes of the ice where they find it easiest to hunt seals.

Continue ReadingPolar bears drown amid Arctic thaw

Rosie O’Donnell and Christian Terror Cells in the US

The American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, Faith and Action and World Net Daily are all busy bashing Rosie O’Donnell for saying “Radical Christians are no different than murderous radical Muslims.”

God damn it. What she said is way tamer than what I said in the recent past with a big fat list of armed, dangerous Christian Terror Cells in the United States.

Why the heck aren’t all these people crying out against me?!! Huh??! I’m doing far more than my share to piss of the religious right, and I’m just not getting any credit. Harrrumph.

Continue ReadingRosie O’Donnell and Christian Terror Cells in the US

Chertoff: We Can’t Protect the Ports. Scientists: We Must Protect the Ports

At the same time that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is telling a Senate committee that we can’t afford to protect our ports from terrorist attack, and that we shouldn’t because Osama’s goal is to drive us into bankruptcy (New York Times article)….
Scientists are telling us that our biggest terrorist threat is a stolen nuclear weapon coming through the U.S. Ports system, and that to not recognize that this is a danger is an “ongoing failure of imagination” (Bulletin of Atomic Scientists).
Meanwhile, we’re all still taking off our shoes at the airport and throwing away our shampoo, while our goverment spends $100 billion dollars a year in Iraq.
This is the bit where the hero’s supposed to chime in with “I’ll protect the ports!” and we all say “my hero.”
What, that’s not going to happen?

Continue ReadingChertoff: We Can’t Protect the Ports. Scientists: We Must Protect the Ports

Make Sure You’re Registered to Vote!

In all the recent hullabaloo surrounding the GOP purging voter rolls in Indiana, it turns out that although I returned my postcard with my corrected new address on it promptly, my voter registration was not updated. I talked to at least one other person who discovered that they are no longer registered to vote either after calling the Marion County Election Board Voter Registration. They returned their registration card also, and they didn’t have the additional wrinkle of having moved recently.
Contact Marion County Election Board Voter Registration and make sure you’re registered to vote!!
Do it quickly — you have to be registered by October 10th!
If you’re not in Marion County, you can find your county election board here.

Continue ReadingMake Sure You’re Registered to Vote!

More Gatsby

“Self-control!” Repeated Tom incredulously. “I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if that’s the idea you can count me out. . . . Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white.”

Flushed with his impassioned gibberish, he saw himself standing alone on the last barrier of civilization.

Before they blamed the “breakdown of the family” on gay people, they used to blame it on interracial marriage. Of course the character quoted–Tom Buchanan–was running around cheating on his wife, but only breaks out this diatribe when his wife is in love with someone else. Fitzgerald called out this hypocrisy in 1925, and we’re still having it stuck down our throats 81 years later.

Continue ReadingMore Gatsby

Princeton Researchers Break Voting Machine Security

Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy have proven that they can easily, undetectibly hack Diebold voting machines and alter votes and the outcome of elections, and they’re publishing a paper on their findings.

Abstract This paper presents a fully independent security study of a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine, including its hardware and software. We obtained the machine from a private party. Analysis of the machine, in light of real election procedures, shows that it is vulnerable to extremely serious attacks. For example, an attacker who gets physical access to a machine or its removable memory card for as little as one minute could install malicious code; malicious code on a machine could steal votes undetectably, modifying all records, logs, and counters to be consistent with the fraudulent vote count it creates. An attacker could also create malicious code that spreads automatically and silently from machine to machine during normal election activities — a voting-machine virus. We have constructed working demonstrations of these attacks in our lab. Mitigating these threats will require changes to the voting machine’s hardware and software and the adoption of more rigorous election procedures.

Continue ReadingPrinceton Researchers Break Voting Machine Security

Air Force chief: Test weapons on testy U.S. mobs

  • Post author:
  • Post category:Politics

Via my friend Ian at [Link deprecated: http://www.socialoracle.com/node/538] Social Oracle, this CNN article:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before being used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday.

The object is basically public relations. Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions from others about possible safety considerations, said Secretary Michael Wynne.
…

The Air Force has paid for research into nonlethal weapons, but he said the service is unlikely to spend more money on development until injury problems are reviewed by medical experts and resolved. They should not be issues like how people claim for compensation for slip and fall injury .If you are injured in any accident, it is advised to first contact a reputed injury claims law firm serving in Canada to claim compensation for the injury caused and give you legal representation. If you’re interested in helping car accident victims, then you can check for attorneys here! If you are from another country and are finding it difficult to communicate with native lawyers, you may contact expert traffic injury lawyers for Chinese speakers or other languages to help you out legally.

Nonlethal weapons generally can weaken people if they are hit with the beam. Some of the weapons can emit short, intense energy pulses that also can be effective in disabling some electronic devices.

And… Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne is getting fired when?

Wait, wait, what country are we in again? I keep forgetting and thinking we have the right to public assembly. Silly f*%&ing me. Yes, let’s microwave people!

[Link deprecated: http://www.socialoracle.com/node/538] As Ian says:

What’s the setting for this “non-lethal” weapon, defrost?

I’m basically at a loss on the definition of a mob, so I consulted a dictionary which says:

1 : a large or disorderly crowd; especially : one bent on riotous or destructive action
2 : the lower classes of a community : MASSES, RABBLE
3 chiefly Australian : a flock, drove, or herd of animals
4 : a criminal set : GANG; especially often capitalized : MAFIA 1
5 chiefly British : a group of people : CROWD

I’m not entirely comfortable with 2,3 and 5. Number 2 would be the ’70’s version of a pale grey meal not entirely appealing or cooked thoroughly.

Given that the police have a proven tendency to not be respectful of people at people public demonstrations (see the raging controversy about the police laughing about shooting a woman in the face with rubber bullets) I don’t think I want the police to have the ability to MICROWAVE ME.

Continue ReadingAir Force chief: Test weapons on testy U.S. mobs